Often referred to as the Jewel of the Solar System, Saturn reaches opposition on May 23rd and is currently best placed for observation during 2015. Despite the planet’s southerly declination, its glorious ring system is favourably tipped in our direction with the northern hemisphere on show.
Liquid water is a requirement for life on Earth, but on much colder worlds life might exist beyond the bounds of water-based chemistry. Researchers at Cornell University offer a template for life that could thrive in the cryogenic seas of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
A new way to process radar data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft gives researchers much clearer and easier to interpret views of the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
Researchers analysing data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft were able to study the effect of a powerful solar outburst on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, when it was unprotected from a raging stream of energetic solar particles.
Ten years ago today, on 14 January 2005, a compact, flattened cylinder called Huygens, chock-full of sensors, cameras and scientific experiments, went hurtling through the orange skies of the mysterious moon Titan.
Titan is the only planetary moon known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. Experiments with the high pressure wind tunnel at Arizona State University’s Planetary Aeolian Laboratory provide key data for understanding dunes on Saturn’s largest moon.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provides scientists with further radar and spectoscopic data during its 21st August 2014 flyby of Saturn’s largest moon, revealing depths of Kraken Mare, Titan’s largest liquid methane sea, and further evidence of transient islands.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft — in its 11th year orbiting Saturn — has spotted the gas giant and its haze-covered moon Titan suspended in the blackness of space like diamonds in the rough.